Editing in the Cloud

Another tidbit from NAB — a demo of Avid’s online, editing-in-the-cloud product. Just a technology demonstration, but it’s pretty darn impressive. If it was simply another editing application it wouldn’t be all that interesting, but all of the media and all of the editing action is taking place on a server thousands of miles away. All your cuts, including up to four layers of visual effects, get transparently assembled and composited on the server at DNxHD 220 and then transcoded and sent to you as you work. Very little latency. Background rendering and distribution. There’s even an iphone application for review and approval.

5 Comments on “Editing in the Cloud”

All the talk at NAB seems to be about “Resolve” for $995, but this “Editing in the Cloud” is going to have a MUCH bigger impact on our lives than a single color grading program. I was very impressed! Great demo.

Gratton very properly notes that this isn’t really editing (as we editors know it) in the cloud, but it is a fantastic look into the future.

It’s also a boon for producers or directors who want to easily assemble a very rough selection of material to help their editors to get a jump start. This is awesome for news, dox and even fiction editors. Used properly, this will be a great collaboration tool.

The next step is to combine it with a tool like iChat Theater or Fuze to get much more interactive collaboration.

You make a good point, Norm — collaboration via review and approval (sending somebody a sequence) is very different from collaboration via a shared session in real time. But nothing can really substitute for working together face to face.

Saw this in a back room, had to wait to see the stage presentation to reconcile what I could talk about. I was impressed. Model not flushed out yet, but probably a lot closer to reality than a mere technology demo. One of my ideas was to use this for broadcast tv and news where people could set up their own collaborative networks to re-cut and mosh up with commentary. Who knows, but the future keeps on moving faster.